Matters of Life and Death
by MagicConan14
Summary: Conan's been sentenced to the ultimate punishment - he dies whenever he causes someone else to die! Since he's a shinigami, it's not going to be easy...AU which begins during the Desperate Revival.
1. Sentenced

Matters of Life and Death

Inspired by the sudden takedown of _Immortal_ (because fanfiction dot net says "no musical lyrics"), _Shinigami Issues_ ("no musical lyrics" again) and _we follow our own steps _by Dandelion san, I have this! It does make me recall _Second Chance_, too...

WARNING: This is not a yaoi fic. Sorry. While I have a list of apologies going, I'd like to apologise I don't own this fic's characters.

* * *

Conan slowly opened his eyes to discover himself in darkness. A sharp pain throbbed in his chest, a reminder of the bullet he'd taken in the cave.

Wait, why was the floor so flat? Where was the Shonen Tanteidan? Where was he-

"You are here in the underworld because you have died from loss of blood," a voice introduced to him, menacing and soft. Confused as to the source of this familiar voice, the detective looked about and spotted an iron wrought lantern in the murky black. He could only make out a pointed chin and a hand that had distinctive markings formed by gun triggers.

"I am Shuichi Akai, your judge and jury. You are charged with staying on earth when you are in fact a shinigami, how do you plead?" The lantern swayed, but no wind was present in the world of darkness. Conan didn't know what to make of this sudden change in atmosphere, so he stayed silent. "I find you guilty as charged. I sentence you to an endless loop of life and death," Akai continued, moving the lantern up to his face as if he were telling a ghost story. The light golden glow of the lantern caught Akai's long dark hair, his black longcoat…and the eyes of a killer, shrouded in bags. "_Sic transit gloria mundi._ So passes the glorious world," the man finished as the detective's eyes rolled into the back of his head. He didn't comprehend anything this Akai person was saying.

Edogawa Conan, a shinigami?

Nah.

/

When he next rose, it was midday and the sun shone into his eyes through the hospital window. (He had no clue as to how he'd gotten to hospital when he was last awake in the cave, but the reason he was there was definitely the bullet. A dull twang of pain affirmed that.) After slipping on his glasses, a dark shadow fell on his bed and helpfully obscured the sun's glare. What was not helpful was the fact Shuichi Akai had been the one to cast this shadow. Like in the underworld, Akai was in a longcoat, but the pitch black had obscured his black knit cap...another somewhat familiar item. Where had he seen Akai before?

Akai's face was poker face blank but Conan could tell from the silence (which could only be described as 'dead' if Akai wasn't so serious) that now wasn't the time for answering that question.

"I am here to watch over you, shinigami," the harsh tone of the mysterious man rang out before Akai disappeared in a puff of smoke. The bespectacled boy followed the lingering traces of said smoke to discover he'd reappeared outside as a crow.

In other words, Akai seemed to be wishing him to his grave.

* * *

I forgot to mention some of Akai's speech in this chapter is from a movie called _The Tracker_ but the exact quotes are heavily altered.

Please read and review!


	2. Beyond Belief

Some facts before the next chapter:

1) Akai isn't Conan's brother, not even by reincarnation. You must be thinking of Tetsuya and Katsuo of _Resurrected Angels._

2) I will confirm that Conan is a shinigami. As for Akai…you'll see.

3) This story wasn't going to be about reincarnation (since _The Mysterious School_ has enough of that) but rather resurrection.

4) Through any of my stories, I'm not trying to offend anyone or any religion. (Just to make that clear.)

* * *

He almost forgot about Akai though due to the fact Ran, the Shonen Tanteidan and Kogoro were surrounding his bed, waiting for him to get better.

/

The crow kept its beady eyes on the boy, all day, every day. Ran had Conan worried because her blood donation was hooked up to him, but he managed to wash away his worries by playing video games with the Shonen Tanteidan...and discovering he wasn't too bad at them. When Conan managed to slip away to talk to the bird a few days after admittance, its gaze was still on him.

"Don't you have anything better to do than just staring at me?" the boy complained with a cough, mentally noting the crow form of Akai was extremely ironic (since 'akai' can mean 'red').

The crow known as Akai simply ruffled its feathers and turned its head away. However, at the same time it passed a message telepathically: "As I am the bridge between a good death and a bad one, no." This conversation somewhat confirmed Conan's underworld experience, but made him think: if shinigami were what Akai meant by the 'bad' side, what - or who - was on the 'good' side?

Or maybe...this was all just a delusion on Conan's part?

/

Heiji and Kazuha dropped by the hospital soon after, the boy holding a bunch of lilies. Since Kazuha gave Heiji an earful about lilies being for dead people, she had to leave almost as soon as she'd arrived.

While she went hunting for better flowers, the Osakan boy eyed the crow outside, then whispered in Conan's ear, "Dat crow's actually a fallen angel. Ya must be someone real special to get him as a bodyguard, 'specially 'cause dat guy's gotta bit of a…reputation."

Suddenly, Conan's face turned to one of shock – if Hattori wasn't making those things up, that meant the worst secret keeper in the world was also a shinigami – then to scepticism, because if this was all a ruse, Hattori was actually good at acting. However Conan made a quick deduction that since acting meant keeping secrets, Hattori wouldn't be any good at acting.

After checking the Osakan for the signs of a liar, he'd realised this wasn't a joke.

The bespectacled boy pulled off his glasses and rubbed them with resignation. Now he really did have to believe Akai.


	3. As If He Had Seen Death Itself

Hattori commented, "Ya alright dere, Kudo? Ya seem a little spaced out." The distant look on Conan's face at the time didn't help.

/

That Hattori boy was definitely up to something, Akai knew. (_No, actually he's a shinigami_; Akai corrected himself, feeling a faint spark of a shinigami aura from the Osakan, _albeit a low level one_.) What Hattori had said – well, what Akai had lip-read of the conversation between Hattori and the boy - was suspicious. A low level shinigami shouldn't dare ever reveal private information about a superior – Hattori should have known that already.

Low level shinigami like this 'Hattori' were easy to read, bountiful and easy to pick off. That's why he'd chosen to betray heaven for the unofficial job of deathmonger or, to put it in a more understandable way, a single police unit for shinigami. Then again, he was the only deathmonger in existence and had sufficiently kept the peace between shinigami, angels and humans for many a human lifetime…including his (temporary) own.

/

Just to further confirm that he wasn't going crazy (and to reminisce about his days as Shinichi), Conan decided to tag along on a trip to the Teitan High cultural festival. A play was apparently happening, and Ran was the heroine – the princess!

Akai the crow, as was now usual for him, sat outside on a branch watching and waiting for something good to happen. His 'something good' came too soon: the princess of the play was almost a spitting image for the female half angel, half shinigami he'd had to break up with when he'd first come to the human world. There was too much controversy surrounding the 'half breeds' at that time, anyway, so it was probably safe to say he'd benefitted from leaving her.

Meanwhile, the actors came to a halt as the Spade Knight embraced the princess and Akai almost fell off his branch, surprised at how strong the boy's aura was. The very reason he stuck around the boy with the glasses – who'd become a teenager sometime between coming to the festival and now – was to keep that boy's aura in check since he was on a completely different level to his friend Hattori. If that aura became too intense, the humans' fragile bodies…or possibly their minds…would be affected in ways the fallen angel couldn't predict.

If an innocent human died because of a shinigami he'd been keeping tabs on, Akai would have to go back to heaven as a disgrace. Since he was already regarded as a disgrace in most angels' eyes, maybe that didn't matter but to the fallen angel, it did.

He peered into the gym building once again…where there was currently no corpse.

The situation was stable, but the crow fluttered off to put some aura barriers into place to be safe. However, by the time he returned, there was a male corpse, Hattori and the boy in the same vicinity.

_A high level shinigami – 'high' being at least rank six when the highest is rank one - sentenced to an endless loop of life and death_, Akai explained to the boy mentally, _will die soon after they send another being to death, whether that being is an angel, human or other shinigami and will repeat that process for however long they committed their offence._

Just as Akai told him, a few seconds after this message got through, Shinichi keeled forward, an invisible force cutting off his breathing. When Hattori checked him, his pulse had disappeared and his eyes had become dilated like he'd seen death itself.

Then again, Shinichi had seen lots of death in his lifetime.


	4. Monochrome

If you didn't get it, 'that boy' or 'the boy' is Shinichi/Conan from Akai's viewpoint.

* * *

"I-It's all part of da play!" Heiji yelled, his face one of panic as he removed the Knight's helmet to reveal the real Shinichi. While he rubbed off his makeup and ruffled his hair back into place, his expression was a mix between anger and panic while Ran was tight-lipped and blindly hoping this was an unintended part of the play. "Kudo once told me ya can't let someone die on ya, or else ya no better than a murderer yaself," he recalled to the gathering crowd.

Sonoko peeked out from backstage and held up a sign…

…simultaneously, the crow disappeared in a puff of smoke.

/

Shinichi, groggy and still attempting to regain his breath, opened his eyes to find himself in the underworld – but this time there was much more to see than blackness. A grey dismal sky constantly deposited fat raindrops on him and the flat ground had become gravel, albeit with a lot less rocks than expected.

Akai, now in 'human' form, reappeared in front of the detective after said detective managed to pull himself to his feet. "Welcome to our world, boy. You won't be able to hide with that smaller form of yours here – everyone here has enough power to sense who you really are," the longhaired man told him. "Like that koibito."

Shinichi, half tuned out to Akai's words and not knowing who the 'koibito' was, admired the skyscrapers around him – they were ordinary ones like in any city but though the colour seemed to have been sucked out of them they were unique due to the gothic roof that topped each one. Stone gargoyles leered down at them from those roofs, their faces like meme trolls but more menacing. As for the residents-

The detective's thoughts got interrupted by Akai's footsteps moving away. When he looked back, a person with silver hair, a black fedora and murderous eyes was giving him a stare down as if he'd seen the teen – or more likely Akai - before. This was the person Akai had been referring to when he'd said, 'Like that koibito.'

It somehow wasn't surprising that a man in black like him would be here...('him' being Gin, not Akai, no matter how much a man in black Akai could be.)

Upon Shinichi's further scrutiny of Gin's face, there was a thin scar underneath the man's left eye and two holes in his black clothing - since there was no blood, Gin had a bulletproof vest on. Akai, meanwhile, slipped his silenced handgun away like he was a cowboy in a western.

However, the teen knew from the tension in the air that the next time Akai and Gin met it was going to be bloodier than this, and instead of seeing monochrome, there would be vivid red.


	5. All Part of the Play?

Just as a slightly smoke-scented breeze whipped past, the bullet holes in Gin's clothing spurted black light then the bullet holes repaired themselves. Almost instantly afterwards thunder shook the ground – there was lightning in the background but there was also fire raining down on them from above. Before anything else could happen though, the same kind of black light that Gin had used came from the ground and sucked Shinichi and Akai in…

/

-Ran's mouth was moving, nothing was coming out but it looked like she was screaming his name. The tears on her face were splashing on to him like the rain had previously done in the underworld.

His hearing came back to him in an instant and he had to plug his ears to drown out her wailing.

"So ya were-" muttered Hattori while placing the costume helmet back on Shinichi's head.

The detective of the east shoved his hand over the Osakan's mouth to silence him, then glanced around to realise he'd been lying on a bed in the school's sick bay. This time only the detective of the west, Sonoko and Ran were gathered around the bed.

Shinichi gave them a weak smile, just to signify that he was okay and that the show would go on. All deviation off the script was assumed to be ad lib…for now, at least.

/

After the play, Akai fluttered overhead while Shinichi and Heiji conferenced about what had happened back there. One thing for certain, that death wasn't acting despite what everyone now believed.

"Simply, da only prevention measure ya can take against da unnecessary death of yours is ta stop seeing people altogether," Heiji thought aloud, but Shinichi had already arrived at that conclusion. "There is another option, though - controlling yer aura."

H-How was he meant to do that?! He was still rather clueless as to what Akai and Hattori were on about with auras and ranks, after all.

The crow made a landing behind them before resuming his other form, the latter event happening while the detective of the west gave a big grin. "Sure we'll teach ya how ta control yer aura! Do keep in mind though dat I'm a rank 8, which is probably not da most ideal for a rank 6 like you…"

Meanwhile, a girl in jeans, a snaggletoothed smile and a striped top peeked at them in an almost stalker-like fashion and Akai, being at the back of the party, spotted her. However, after giving her an acknowledging glance, he left her alone…


End file.
